FREEMASONRY promotes education, and would have it free, universal, compulsory, and unsectarian. By the term Education Freemasonry understands not merely mental culture, not merely literary and scientific acquirements, but the training of the intellect, the feelings, the moral and pure religious principles. Freemasonry aims at rendering man as wise and as good-not always as it is desirable that he should be rendered, which is but seldom possible, depending as it does upon the physical organization of each individual, and upon surrounding influences; but as wise and as good as his physical organization that is, his moral and intellectual susceptibleness (for on this depends the formation of his character, this is the foundation upon which the moral and social structure is to be raised) will admit of his being rendered.

This is an undeniable truth, though it ever has been a thorn in the flesh of theologians, who assert that man's character depends entirely on the will; that it is within his power to be good or bad, a saint or a sinner. They might with equal truth assert that it is within the power of the will to be wise or foolish. Gradually, however, and, what is not a little curious, unawares, they have been compelled to admit the truth-a truth which completely undermines their system. Thus in the Herald, which is every Sunday very religious, and all the other days of the week outspoken, in its issue of 3d of August, 1874, in an editorial headed "Child Criminals," the struggle between theology and truth is made evident. It is made so from the very cautionemployed in treating the subject-matter of the article. "Man," says

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by RAPHAEL D'C. Lewin, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. VOL. IV.-31

the writer, "is very much the creature of circumstances. He is mostly what his surroundings have made him." Why not speak the whole truth, namely, that the circumstances exercise on man a greater or less influence according to his physical organization?

No man whose natural inclinations are evil can be made a good man. If he has received from Nature the courage or boldness to follow their bent, he will do so openly; if cunning, caution, fear, pride, the love of offspring (for many a bad man can be and often is a very affectionate father), he will indulge them secretly, cautiously; for inclination is not action, any more than speech is truth. Thus the natural inclination being the foundation, and this depending entirely upon the conformation of the brain and upon the nervous system, the character will be developed according to such physical organization; the action will be regulated jointly by this and the surrounding circumstances.

The cat, metamorphosed into a princess, retained the nature of a cat; she acted as the cat at sight of the mouse; had that mouse not made its appearance, she would have acted (never felt) as a princess. You can never change the boy Pomeroy into a Howard; a Howard metamorphosed into a tiger would still retain the Howard nature in a tiger's body. The Lucrezia Borgia might have remained at heart what Nature had made her, though shut up in a nunnery of the strictest order: the pure Lucrezia, even at the court of an Alexander VI. or a Louis XV., would still have remained the worthy and noble wife of Brutus. "Remove our boys from, the tenement-houses," says the journalist. Many have been removed, and after attaining man's estate been put in high places, and those who in youth had been little vagabonds and petty thieves proved, when they were surrounded by circumstances favorable to the more free and more bold development of their character, great vagabonds, great ruffians, and thieves on a higher scale. There are individuals, families, populations, races, into whom vice does not, because it cannot, enter; there are individuals, families, populations, races, that delight in vice, crime, brutality, and immorality. Nature made them what they are, and you may remove them from the tenement-houses to mansions in Fifth avenue, you will not root out the weeds that are of Nature's growth. Shall we then abandon the hope of improving? By no "Place man," says Freemasonry, "from his infancy in the midst of such circumstances as will act most favorably, as far as

means.

*The italics are mine.

possible, on the formation of his character. Protect him against the insidious influences of evil. Educate him, lead his thoughts into a good channel, and though the subject of your exertions may not answer your expectations and realize your hopes, it is highly probable, it is almost certain, that his offspring will be born better than himself. For thought, mind, intellect, soul-call it what you please-that union or combination of sentiment and reason, acts upon animated matter just as animated matter, and the physical, material man acts upon the intellect, mind, thought, reason, or soul.

I shall now endeavor briefly to show the influence Freemasonry exercises on education, and through education on the moral and social as well as intellectual condition of the community-that is, on the individuals of which communities are composed-as far as the circumstances already alluded to will permit the exercise of such influence. I can state with certainty and truth, for I speak from personal observation during a long series of years, and after careful and impartial inquiry and investigation, that wherever Freemasonry is not interfered with, but allowed free scope for the exercise of its beneficent influence, education is widespread and flourishing. Wherever education is promoted, vice and crime diminish. On the other hand, wherever it meets with opposition, wherever it is proscribed or condemned, there education languishes, is partial, doled out, limited, defective, and often bad; and there also crime, vice, immorality, cruelty, and inhumanity are rampant.

Among the Teutonic dialects speaking nationis, governments act upon the principle that "knowledge is power" for good, and that man cannot know too much of fact, of truth; that the sure foundation of a state is laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and that every sneer at education, at culture, at book-learning (which is the wisdom of the experience of mankind) is a sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin. In the other countries, the Latin dialects speaking nations, on the contrary, we are told-1 give the very words:-"We ought to beware of new-fangled science." "We ought not to encourage intellectual pride." "Much reading ought to be discountenanced." One writer says that "the education. of youth ought to be limited to that which will enable them to become smart and active money-getting men and women of the world," and no more.

Let us only look near home. In New Mexico, up to the year 1870, in a population of 92,000, 48,836 over ten years of age

could not read; upward of 80 per cent. are even own illiterate.* Indeed, when in New Mexico it was proposed, some time previous to 1872, to establish free schools, 87 votes were cast for it and over 5,000 against it. And what is the condition of New Mexico? A recent traveler speaks of it as "a haunt of banditti," " an effete civilization." One of the most resplendent virtues as well as most sacred duties of Freemasonry is charity-the charity of tolerance and forbearance, not lightly judging men by their actions, but endeavoring to discover the cause and inducement; it does not approve, much less condemn hastily. The charity, moreover, which holds out the helping hand of universal brotherhood to the suffering, the distressed, the oppressed ; the charity of a Spanish Las Casas and an American Sumner, an English Howard and a German Heine, a Catholic Frere, and a Protestant Peabody, a Jewish Touro and a Hindoo Rahmon Roy; the charity of an Elizabeth Fry, a Florence Nightingale, a Grace Darling, a Mattie Stevenson; the Jewish charity that builds asylums for orphans, the . Catholic charity that establishes reformatories for erring youth, and becomes the loving foster-mother of the foundling; the Protestant charity that gives a home to homeless children and opens to them a career of usefulness to others and of prosperity to themselves; the charity of the journalist who visits the abodes of want and destitution and thus points the way to the manifestation of that benevolence which in this city, in this country, is never fourd sleeping. The charity of the thousands of noble women, so justly entitled to the name of "Sisters," who amidst the blood and fire of the battlefield, or braving the pestilential atmosphere of the hospital ward or sick-chamber, risk health and life to bring aid, relief, hope, and religious consolation to suffering humanity: and let me add, the charity of a Bergh of New York, of a Martin of Ireland, a John Wesley of England-the kind-hearted founder of Methodism who warned us, nearly a century before Bergh, that the dumb beasts will rise in judgment against those who inflict pain and suffering upon them. Such is the charity of Freemasonry, which does not inquire into a fellow-being's creed, but into his need. In short, Freemasonry seeks to dispel the clouds of ignorance, superstition, and untruth, and to break down the artificial barriers of rank and caste; to unite all good men in carrying on the great work which looks to the ultimate

*The reader is respectfully referred to my "Defence of our National System of Education against the Attacks of the Catholic Press," published in the NEW ERA between June, 1873, and August, 1874.

enfranchisement of the human race from the bondage of evil, embracing as it does in its teachings the highest moral rectitude, founded on the fatherhood of God as a common parent, and the brotherhood of man as His offspring.

Such, then, I believe to be the nature of that institution which is known under the name of Freemasonry. Such are its objects, such its aspirations; such the teachings under which the human family is to be united, and by the holy bands of brotherhood led into and kept in the path of philanthropy, wisdom, knowledge, and truth; and this is in reality all the mystery about it.

Now is it not reasonable to suppose that such an institution would be appreciated universally? It is not. It has, as I have already observed, its opponents-can count its enemies by millions. It is hated; hated for what it teaches, and we have seen what its teachings are, and hated for what it teaches not. For instance: it is a singular fact that the enemies of Freemasonry studiously confound religion, virtue, morality, and faith, and wish to make it appear that they are convertible terms. Freemasonry inquires, whether they be so, and finds they are not.

Religion, virtue, and morality may be sisters and proceeding hand in hand, lend each other assistance and support; but they are distinct, different, and can exist and act separate and independent of one another. And so can faith or belief exist and operate separate and apart from either religion, morality, or virtue and even humanity, and indeed turn her back upon all. Of this fact both history and experience furnish ample evidence.

Ask some men, some bodies of men, what virtue is, what religion is. Can they tell you? To be sure, they can. Hear them.

The Hindoo will tell you that virtue and religion are abstinence from animal food, and self-inflicted torture and mutilation.

The Moslem, that they consist in abstinence from wine, in subsisting during the whole month of the Rhamadan upon one meal in the twenty-four hours, and in making five ablutions daily.

The Muscovite, in feasting during Lent upon dried mushrooms. boiled in hempseed-oil, and during the Easter week upon hardboiled eggs and brandy. Strange that all sects more or less carry on a petty warfare against the kitchen.

The holy hermit makes religion consist in dwelling in a cave, feeding upon roots and herbs, shunning human habitation, and avoiding intercourse with his fellow-men, running away as fast as his enfeebled